Novelist and Reviewer:
Author: The Other Book, The Liberators. The Darkening Path Trilogy: The Broken King, vol. 1;
The King's Shadow, vol. 2, and The King's Revenge, vol. 3.
Also The Double Axe, a retelling of the Minotaur story.

The Darkening Path

Monday, 28 July 2014

Just who is Childe Roland? His name is
imbued with mystery. The liquid “ls” and hard dentals suggest movement, a march
to the beat of a slow-moving army.

There is a picture of him, by Edward
Burne-Jones, in which he is encased in armour and defiantly holding his horn.
He appears for the briefest of moments in King Lear; Robert Browning wrote a whole poem about him, which ends with the
stirring lines: “And yet / Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, / And blew
“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.” There is afolk story, in which Roland’s sister, Burd Ellen, gets
snatched away by the King of Elfland after going round a church backwards;
Roland follows his brothers to that strange, other place, and manages to get
her back.

He is a character made from many things:
shifting, and yet dauntless. When Childe Roland comes to the Dark Tower, in
Browning’s poem, what is it that he finds there? When Edgar, disguised as the
madman Poor Tom, sings his snatch of a song, he takes Lear off the heath, off
stage, into the darkness. Roland is always on a journey, into the unknown. For
a character that’s so elusive, he has a great deal of power.

Whoever he is, whatever his origins, and
wherever he’s going, he is the direct inspiration for my new book, The
Broken King. Roland was a paladin of Charlemagne,
historically speaking (though barely attested), who fought bravely for his
king. He becomes transformed into a figure of fantasy in the Chanson de
Roland, where he is given a horn with which to
summon the emperor, and a sword that was brought by an angel.

Thus he pops up in Ariosto’s romantic epic,
Orlando Furioso, which is about him, or an idea
of him. Here his sword once belonged to Hector of Troy (and perhaps the process
he is undergoing, from knight to legend, is the same that Hector, Achilles,
Aeneas and Odysseus underwent.) In this long poem he falls in love with
Angelica and loses his wits – only to have them restored to him by a knight
who’s found them on the moon.

He passes on through the centuries. Surely
it is he who is the subject of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, ageless, vital, still on his (and then her) quest for meaning? His
journey has in the twentieth century sparked many other works: Alan Garner’s Elidor; Stephen King’s Dark Tower series; Francis King used it for the
title of a 1946 novel, To the Dark Tower.
Roland’s is a quest that seems to have at the same time both no meaning, and
all the meaning in the universe.

When I was smaller, I imagined that
“Childe” Roland was a child. Having heard snatches of his story, or stories, I
pictured myself as Roland, embarking upon endless strange and terrible quests.
Much later I learned that “Childe” was in fact another word for “Knight”; and
so it struck me, still later on, that there is no reason why a child could not
be a knight.

Children’s books are about becoming an
adult, and facing up to strange and terrible things: why couldn’t my new hero
be a version of Roland, setting out on a journey which threatened more dangers
than he could ever imagine? What lurks in the Dark Tower is endlessly
fascinating: not least because it stands for so much of our own dark
imaginings; and, perhaps more importantly, it prefigures all our deaths. In
Browning, it’s possible that that is what the Dark Tower is: the end of a
struggle; the acceptance of the end. And yet Roland is strong in the face of
it.

My hero, in twenty-first century Britain,
couldn’t actually be called Roland – he’s Simon, though Roland is his middle
name. The folk story was the germ of the book’s plot: I changed it so that
Simon becomes the cause of his sister’s disappearance. Along the way he picks
up a horn and a sword, both of which have magical properties. Having been an
ordinary boy, he becomes, in effect, a knight.

His quest is to save his sister from the
Broken King. But it’s also the quest that Roland performs, to the dark tower,
into nothingness, into the depths of meaning and reality and existence
themselves. It’s the journey that children make when they struggle from
childhood into adulthood; and one that takes place, always, onwards and
onwards, at the steady pace of Childe Roland’s very name, in the backs of our
adult minds.

One day we will face the dark tower, if it
is death. And who knows what we will find when we put the horn to our lips, and
blow?

Wednesday, 16 July 2014

Marvel Comics have announced, to much chatter, that they are going to recast the god Thor as a woman. They have stressed that the new Thor will not be a "She-Thor," or a "Thorita," but Thor him- or rather her-self.

Reactions have so far been mixed. I began to wonder: is gender such an important, indeed essential part of a god or goddess? Let us try some thought experiments. The goddess Aphrodite, for example, is the goddess of generation, passionate love, the sea. She is invoked in those aspects. Lucretius (who doesn't believe in her) calls upon her at the beginning of his De Rerum Natura as the "alma" - nourishing - mother. It is important that she is a mother, as the things that flow from that are feminine. If you replaced it with Pater Aphroditus, you would have an entirely different set of affairs.

Some gods are resolutely tied up with gender. Juno is the goddess of child-birth, for example; it would seem contrary to endow a male god with her attributes. Others are ambiguous. Dionysus is a god who has long hair like a woman, and who hangs around with women. He is a feminine man: not, importantly, a masculine woman. Artemis, though very definitely feminine, does things that are largely considered male - hunting; she would not be the same if she were a man who did things considered to be feminine. Athena has the attributes of a warrior, and of wisdom. Compare her to Ares - he is just war, pure and simple

Thor is an elemental god, a god of thunder and lightning, and a smith god. He has aspects of Zeus and of Hephaestus; Tacitus thought of him as Hercules. What happens if you switch genders with these gods and all the stories that are told about them? The scene in the Iliad, where Thetis supplicates Zeus, works because Thetis is a mother concerned about her son; switch Zeus into a mother too, and the dynamic shifts. Thor as woman suddenly has a whole new set of attributes, relationships with her wives, her brothers, her father Odin.

There is a lot to be said for playing with mythology. It is there to be tinkered with, there to be recast in different forms, and to have variegated lights thrown on it. That is why it is still alive, and why it still speaks to us, and why we always return to it. There is no reason why Marvel should not introduce a female aspect of Thor. But to say that Thor is a woman is to displace something fundamental about myth and its sources: in fact to disregard them entirely, for the sake of a marketing exercise. The power of myth lies in certain unchanging elements: to change those is to deflate it entirely.

Tuesday, 8 July 2014

Chairete, (yes, I've just been to Greece): Here are the books reviewed in my summer round up of children's books for Literary Review.

The Islands of Chaldea by Diana Wynne Jones,Tale of a Tail by Margaret Mahy,The Box of Red Brocade by Catherine Fisher,The Children of the King by Sonya Hartnett,Poppy by Mary HooperThe Blood List by Sarah Naughton,The Night Raid by Caroline Lawrence,Brilliant by Roddy Doyle,Never Ending by Martyn Bedford,The Ultimate Truth by Kevin Brooks,Echo Boy by Matt Haig.

BOOK THREE: THE DARKENING PATH

Other Social Media Type Things

Quotes

Praise for The Double Axe

"I began to leaf through, then could not put the book down, so easy to read it was like being in a trance. You can virtually taste the blood, smell the sea breezes, touch the stone walls of the palace as you run your hands along them, inhabit the strong young body of the 13 year old narrator and feel his fear and exhilaration. The pages almost turned themselves as my brain was effortlessly filled with data normally the preserve of scholarly classicists." Mary Killen, The Lady

"Womack’s fifth novel, unsettling, original and absorbing, shows him at the height of his powers." Imogen Russell Williams, Literary Review.

"Learned and exciting." Suzi Feay, Financial Times.

"...a clever rummage through the myth that manages to turn it on its head and recast it in a new light... promises great things to come." Toby Clements, The Telegraph.

" You should try this book. The spare, simple narrative tightens the tension in every page and keeps you reading. There is suspicion, trust, betrayal, and death. Curses, prophecies and magic. Excellent stuff!" Reading Matters.

Praise for The King's Shadow

"The King's Shadow, like The Broken King and Womack's two previous books, remains full of atmosphere, menace and lightly-worn learning. Classical influence is evident in the lunar names of King Selenus and his daughter and in the compass directions of the Roman winds; and there are nice, unsettling touches of warped courtliness and chivalry throughout. A darkly disconcerting high fantasy, in the vein of Alan Garner or Susan Cooper, it should appeal to adventurous young readers." - Imogen Russell Williams, Literary Review

"Womack delivers a whole, satisfying story ... Giants, dwarfs and magic all bubble in the mix - along with a dash of romance." Suzi Feay, The Financial Times.

Praise for The Broken King

"Philip Womack is one of the best contemporary writers of children's fantasy... There's a real sense of deepening menace... will please any young fantasy fan." Philip Reeve, author.

"[Womack] does conjure an eerie poetry of the subconscious, a kind of Alice in Terrorland." Suzi Feay, The Financial Times

"A magical story full of powerful images and unexpected consequences." Julia Eccleshare, Lovereading4Kids

"The Broken King is superbly written and totally gripping, and I want the next bit now." Kate Saunders, Literary Review.

"Like Alan Garner, Philip Womack takes ancient fairy-tales about searching for a child kidnapped by dark magic, and turns it into a haunting adventure exploring love, courage, fear and friendship. Written with sensitivity, intelligence and conviction, it's the kind of classic story readers can't get enough of." Amanda Craig

"A cracking pace, enigmatic characters and terrifying adversaries will have you clamouring for the next in the series. " - Sarah Naughton

Praise for The Other Book

"Philip Womack is a writer of huge talent" - Artemis Cooper in The Daily Telegraph'Womack is not simply writing for children, he is, like many of the best children's writers, remembering how it felt to be a child'. Roz Kaveney in Times Literary Supplement

'A ripsnorting children's adventure ... the helter-skelter pace will keep any right-thinking ten year old hooked.' Archie Bland in The Spectator

Praise for The Liberators

What is so rewarding about Womack’s book is that the quality of the writing is good enough to slow you down. From the “pall of fear” that “hung over London as its citizens mobbed around, uncertain of the dangers that hid in their midst” to the conversations between children and adults, the pace and mystery are underscored by a poet’s imagination. This is a proper, copper-bottomed magical story of the kind once written by Alan Garner and John Masefield, and it uses the sinister side of Greek myth with brio.' Amanda Craig, The Times

About Me

Principally a writer, of four novels: The Other Book, The Liberators, The Broken King and The King's Shadow; and a reviewer; as well as a creative writing workshop leader, lecturer and contributing editor.